


Dead Poets Society

by CAPSING



Category: DC Animated Universe, DCU, Justice League - All Media Types
Genre: (like there's death but they work around that), (others stay dead though), (sort of), Angst, Demon/Human Relationships, Gore, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Suicide Attempt, Temporary Character Death, also some religious-talk thrown in
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-24
Updated: 2017-02-24
Packaged: 2018-09-26 16:04:37
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,215
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9910448
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CAPSING/pseuds/CAPSING
Summary: Roses are reds, violets are blueTis but a flesh wound, it wouldn’t keep me from you





	

**Author's Note:**

> Next On: ‘Obscure Nonexistent Ships’ and ‘I Shouldn’t But I Wrote It Anyway’  
> Featuring: Author Dodging Responsibilities Like An Olympic Champ
> 
>  **SPOILERS FOR JUSTICE LEAGUE DARK!** (it ain't that great of a movie though)

Jason should’ve prayed more.

He prayed three times a day and attended the mass every Sunday as a boy, and whenever he could in his life as a knight. He gave away from his meager earning to charity and broke bread among the orphans and the poor.

Others saw him as a kind man, but Jason himself knew he did it out of selfishness; a desperate attempt to save his soul from eternal damnation in hell.

It starts at a fairly young age, when the boys in the village whisper about Mary-Ann, the prettiest girl. Jason doesn’t see what’s so special about her; he’d rather watch the blacksmith at his work, pounding lumps of metal into whichever form he’d like.

At thirteen, a traveling circus comes wandering about; his mother catches him with one of the performers – a limber boy slightly older than him – and he carries the thin scars on his back as a reminder to never repeat the blasphemous act. She does it out of love, Jason knows, and doesn’t blame her – the fault lies within him, engraved into his very bones.

Men are creatures that are helpless against the temptation of sin, and Jason is weaker than most. He knows he was an abomination from birth; a deviant who learns to take great care to conceal it from prying eyes and sharp tongues. He dedicates his life to helping others, but he was a fool to think it’d do any good when his core was so corrupted.

Hindsight is 20/20, and by the time he realizes that, he already had his soul and body bound to a despicable demon for all eternity, being in the wrong place, at the wrong time.

He thinks Merlin must’ve known; a being of sorcerery at his level must have taken but a glimpse at Jason to know of his accursed nature, and to punish him accordingly.

 

Jason should’ve prayed more, because by the time he prays for death, no one is listening.

 

* * *

 

They spend their first fifty years hating each other terribly.

Etrigan is a simpleton, a being no more complex than a rabid wolf. He’s vengeful and pours out bloodthirst by the gallon. Every ounce of spare energy Jason has, he invests in keeping Etrigan bound; hearing him rattle against the walls of his cage and roar in the depths of his mind like a deranged beast, torturing him in every waking moment with malicious rhymes about the horrors he’d put Jason through, how he’d snap off his head and drain the marrow of his bones before leaving his corpse to the maggots.

Jason never knew he could be that exhausted; training for knighthood seems a mere child-play by comparison, and there’s no time for respite.

 

One time, he makes the mistake of resting his eyes.

He wakes up to the smell of roasting meat and smoke, to a coppery taste in his mouth laced with soot and death.

The remains of the village burn and scorch into his cowardly heart, and stay with him for the next seven years, in which he never once closes his eyes longer than the length of a single blink.

 

* * *

 

Jason cradles the dying boy in his arms, settling down on the dirty snow. He’s thin as a skeleton, skin covered in sores that reek, body wasted away to the point it no longer even has the strength to shiver.

‘ _Fool is one that wastes his breath, on those who court the doors of death.’_

“I don’t expect you to understand,” Jason speaks, voice low. He doesn’t think the boy can hear him, the wheezing of his wet lungs growing fainter and far in-between.

As he cradles the boy closer, providing whichever comfort he may offer on the frigid outskirts of the village, he finds the sight of him sets a burning jealousy in his heart. He lets it warm his veins and accepts its bitter weight; he constantly manages to surprise himself, for whenever he thinks he can sink no lower than he did, he proves himself wrong.

The boy lets out a whimper, and Jason strokes his hair.

“It’s okay,” he lies to him, “you’re okay.”

 

 

Jason digs the boys’ grave through the frozen ground until dawn breaks, and makes a proper cross to mark it.

‘ _Whichever for you squander our time, on a beggar-boy, not worth a dime?’_

The answer comes to him before he manages to stop it, brought by fatigue he constantly carried around like the heaviest cross (on which he can only wish he’d eventually get crucified upon.)

“No one deserves to die alone,” he tells Etrigan, bringing his arm to dry off the sweat on his brow.

 

It brushes off against his cheek, and he’s surprised to find it wet.

 

* * *

 

‘ _Those cowards that you want dead, let Etrigan have at them instead.’_

Jason pants heavily; he’s no match for the bandits who ravage the village. There’s too simply too many of them, and they have horses, as well.

“What of the villagers?” He asks, and tastes salt on his lips.

‘ _Those pesky humans would be whole, if you’d let Etrigan out, rather than stall!_ ’

Jason knows better than to trust the Devil, but God haven’t left him with many options – if he’d keep Etrigan locked away, the villagers would surely die. If he’d release him, they might have a chance to survive.

It’s the first time he’d willingly release a Demon to slaughter humans.

(It wouldn’t be the last.)

He sinks to one knee, and it feels like the earth would swallow him whole, straight into the depths of Hell.

“Gone! Gone! O' form of man” he recites, like a judge reading a verdict out to a convict. Each vowel is ash in his mouth, as he feels witchcraft crawling on his skin like the plague, ”and rise the De–“

 

* * *

 

Jason’s dreams were rarely sweet, but he is still not prepared for such a horrendous nightmare to assault his mind.

The heavens are black with smoke and death, like a veil of finality that hangs above the mortals to soon drape across them and choke them out.

The sword in his hand is both heavy and weightless, an extension of his arm that slices through armors, harvesting lives like fresh summer wheat that the farmers lying dead at his feet wouldn’t ever get to see.

The screams are the screeches of the damned clawing through his skull; but instead of being horrified and sickened, they rattle in his mind like the satisfied purrs of a fat cat, pleasant and uncaring. It causes him to laugh, his belly a spiking pyre of violence and relentless joy at being let loose. The terrified eyes of his victims are bright like ripe cherries – he picks them out and chews on them, and they’re juicy between his fangs. It’s mayhem and madness and it's like a warm snug cloak of righteousness, sweet as nectar and intoxicating as finely aged wine.

It’s all of Jason’s sins at their horrific glory, and not the slightest trace of guilt to cover them up.

 

*

 

Jason wakes in a bed of blooming violets to find his hands red with blood.

“You’ve kept your word,” Jason speaks to the sky, blue and cloudless. A crow crosses it, cawing aloud, flying using the same winds that carry the sour smell of a realized battle in the air.

‘ _For Etrigan, his word is all that he has got; he’d never promise, if it is for naught._ ’ The demon snorts. ‘ _Unlike scheming humans and traitorous fools, Etrigan always abides to the rules.’_

“Thank you,” he chokes out loud.

 

The disgust he feels with himself is never easier to swallow.

 

* * *

 

Forever, they both discover, is a terrifying thing; and so time softens them towards each other.

 

The concept of immortality, Jason finds, is just as tedious for a thousand-years-old demon as it is to a mortal man of only couple of dozens of years to his name. Time works differently for demons, and despite Etrigan's age, he is not quite wise nor is he complex. Jason finds that demons are rather simple creatures, bound to few strong urges they fulfill to a fault. For Etrigan, it's bloodlust, violence and a compulsion to rhyme; once Jason manages to put aside his feelings of misery and self-pity, he can bring the curse cast upon him to be of use.

Over time, he finds Etrigan is also a being of very simple emotions, and his rage over Merlin rages for years until it is replaced with whichever target Jason sets.  
Etrigan is like a bull, which Jason needs only to set loose while pointing at the right direction, and hope he wouldn’t trample anyone innocent in his rampage. Etrigan doesn't resent the comparison; bulls, Etrigan tells him, have formidable horns, which is more than he can say about humans, who have none.

 

Their carefully constructed symbiosis builds over fifty decades.

 

There are set-backs, of course.

 

Every several decades Etrigan has a lapse, going berserk and slaughtering innocent people; in the reserved ones it’s less than a score of them – in the bad ones, they’re a whole platoon that dyes the rivers red like God did for Moses.

Unlike Moses's tale, however, there’s no ruler to intimidate into action, no people to set free from their servitude; no one but Jason, a low-ranking knight that attempted to cheat destiny and escape from his eternal damnation, only to be sent straight into its clutches.

Demons don’t do apologies; its meaningless to try and reason with them or their kind. Etrigan seethes with fury each time after he wronged Jason’s trust, clawing at his soul as Jason folds on himself, trying to reign him in and keep the memories of slaughter from his thoughts and clean the remains of his victims from under his nails.

At first, it frustrates Jason to no end; but Jason finds compassion in his shriveled heart – not towards Etrigan, but towards himself. Jason feels the toll it takes on him, the realization each connection he’d forge is doomed from the very start to leave him in pain, that all those he'd let himself cherish would slip away from him to crumble and decay like rotten spring flowers on a yellowing plane. Etrigan is his only confidant, the only one he can count to stay by him, for better or worse.

So he forgives him, time and time again, to keep whatever sanity he might still have.

Every time he lets himself, a small part of him dies as well, even when his body would not succumb to death, no matter how much he tries.

 

Each time he wakes, body whole and spirit crushed, Etrigan would berate him.

 

‘ _A stooge, an imbecile and also a twit – those three combined still won’t describe your deceit_ ,’ he growls at Jason after cutting them off the rope Jason looped around his neck.

Jason doesn’t reply, and Etrigan continues to speak words of revulsion and keeps from rampaging for nearly three years.

 

 

 

* * *

 

His first thought, upon finally meeting Etrigan face-to-face is " _You're much bigger than I thought you'd be_." He's so used to have Etrigan at the back of his mind, replying to every waking thought that comes to pass, that the silence is unsettling; even when he sees him right before his eyes, it doesn't feel like he's really there.

His second thought, over the ache growing in his chest and the lightheadedness he feels when Etrigan carefully cradles him close, is that he would've liked to be thoroughly ravished by the demon.

It's a horribly twisted thought to have, but Jason is a horribly twisted man, and he'd come to terms with it many years ago, as chinks of his soul fell away and left him with too many regrets to acknowledge. Etrigan had been butchering whichever unfortunate man Jason tried to bugger over the years, which amounted to exactly six – before Jason stopped trying at all. They have never discussed the matter, like many of the things they keep from acknowledging; but privately, when Etrigan’s mind was elsewhere, Jason lamented that even a demon considered him to be so perveted he’d lash out at any cost to keep from taking part at such an act.

Jason has just saved the Earth by striking Destiny down with a sword; the scales are already tipped against his favour, so on his deathbed, he allows himself a small misdeed.

He allows himself to fantasize.

In his fantasy, Etrigan’s red eyes look down at him with grief– not with triumph over crushing the vessel of his imprisonment. His enormous form dwarves Jason’s, who hadn’t found anyone to be intimidating in hundreds of years, living in Etrigan's shadow, and his touch is tender.

John isn’t there, nor the others (John’s most annoying, though).

It’s just the two of them.

The edges of his vision are blurring, and his heart is slowing down. There’s infinity between every dimming heartbeat and the next, so many unspoken things that pass between them as he smiles up at Etrigan.

 

“It’s a welcome end,“ Jason says, and lets the fantasy fade away for good.

 

* * *

 

 

There’s a knock on the door.

Jason frowns, eyes still shut. The thought feels unnatural, but he can’t quite figure out why.

Then there’s a blast; it sounds like the door had been blown off its shaky hinges.

Jason wants to open his eyes, but it feels like such a hassle.

“ _Awake, arise, the son of man_ ,” Etrigan’s voice booms, “ _come forth into this endless plane_!”

“You’re loud,” Jason mutters into the bed, still frowning. The skin upon his breast itches.

“ _Fret not, beloved, open your eyes_ ,” Etrigan continues booming, “ _make haste, make haste – you must arise_!”

Jason grumbles. “You’ve already said that. Using the same word twice– “

He blinks his eyes open, even with his eyelids feeling heavier than he had ever felt them, but it feels important.

Jason puts his all into opening his eyes.

When he finally manages it, something unwinds in his chest. He’s not exactly sure what it is, but he feels lighter – like his breath had been stolen from him and he hadn’t even realized it until the chain that choked him was undone.

“Where are we?” He asks Etrigan, just to make sure. His eyes are glued to the cracked plank of wood before him, which has a natural pattern resembling a pair of boots. It’s a sight Jason is intimately familiar years, as he had spent countless sleepless nights staring at that very spot, so very long ago, in a memory so distant it is just as feasible as a dream.

“ _Your utmost desire surrounds us both – we’re at the place in which you’ve spent your growth._ ”

“Home,” Jason says – not the city, but his home, the village he was born at. There’s nothing of it – Jason visited the place over the years and it was all but smothered away by the elements, a forgotten place of those long-dead, just another unremarkable field across the lands.

The smell of fresh hay fills his nose as he takes a deep breath, tucking a lock of hair behind his ear as he takes the room in. The small wooden chest entrusted to him by his grandfather, in which he kept his possessions; the first cup he grafted by his own hand, that cost him a small scar on one of his fingers–

A horse neighs loudly, and Jason feels the breath catching up in his throat as he recognizes his mare’s call - Margaret, long deceased, 

He turns to Etrigan, who stands by his bedside, looming, far too tall for the room.

A moment later, and the ceiling climbs up, leaving plenty of space for Etrigan to straighten his shoulders.

“I died,” Jason says, scratching at the skin above his heart; when he places his hand over it, he can’t feel blood pumping beneath the surface.

“ _Indeed you have perished in my arms – assaulting Etrigan with many qualms._ ”

Jason frowns and looks around again; it all seems familiar, right– as he tucks his hair back again, he realizes that for the first in nearly three-hundred years, his hair is long – as long as it was, the day he was meant to depart from the living world and onto the next– the day Etrigan and himself were forcefully bound.

“If I’m dead,” Jason speaks, confused. “Why are you here? We’re not bonded anymore.”

" _It’s been five hundred years and a score_ ,” Etrigan crouches near, fangs bared in an expression which loosely resembles a smile, if one squinted and tilted their head just so. “ _Alas, Etrigan finds himself wanting more."_

“You do realize I’ve been waiting for my death,” Jason says patiently, “far longer than any human ever did.” Strangely, he feels no anger simmering underneath his skin. He should be angry, he thinks, but the words just hold to their truth with no further judgement behind them. It’s like separating from Etrigan had stripped the anger away from him, leaving him content for no apparent reason.

A suspicion nudges at him; is that what being at peace meant?

 

“ _You died once, and twice – reborn, anew!_ ” Etrigan cuts off his musings, _“Jason wouldn’t be left in Hell to stew_!”

A shiver runs through Jason; during their entire era together, he could count the number of times Etrigan had called him by name on his two hands.

(It sounds good.)

“We spent half a millennium stuck together,” Jason shrugs off the discussion about Hell, because it doesn’t seem terribly important at the moment. “I can’t imagine I’d find myself wanting to spend the second half in the same manner.”

“ _Such bite to your words that hold no spite – Etrigan shan’t let you again out of his sight,_ " Etrigan snorts. “ _Despite the pact that was cast on us both, it is only the wizard that Etrigan loathes_ ,” he adds. “ _Confronted by the truth of your mortality, Etrigan could not bear this finality_.”

There are many questions running through Jason’s head; he smooths one hand against the coarse blanket and stands up. His feet are bare and the wooden floor is pleasantly cool. He wiggles his toes before circling the bed to stand next to Etrigan, then looks up.

 

Thousand questions on his tongue, but he only lets out one.

 

“Why do you speak in rhymes, Etrigan?” he asks.

“In the existence of the whole,” Etrigan places a massive hand on Jason’s side, “Only these will sooth my soul– ”

The claws prickle through the thin nightclothes Jason wears, and he feels his cheeks growing warm, though not half-as-warm as Etrigan’s skin.

“A well-versed poem, spoken aloud– “ Etrigan looks down at him, and Jason thinks he never quite saw a red that matches the shade of Etrigan’s eyes, “– and the gaze in your eyes, if to stare I’m allowed.”

It was hard, keeping any sort of animosity towards a demon who spoke in rhymes, which also apparently saved him from his in-due damnation.

 

“See,” Jason says, “You can speak in first person, when it fits your rhythm.”

If Jason’s soul is already damned, he might as well.

 

“Would it require a rhyme?” Jason asks, “because I’m thinking a duck– I’d very much want for us both to fu–”

 

 

(Damnation, Jason finds, is pretty damn sweet.)

**Author's Note:**

> Comments are love ♥ Constructive criticism as well! :)
> 
> turn out demons can be pretty  
> ... possessive  
> ba-dam-tssss


End file.
